Homeland (14 page)

I had to do the portrait twice, because Aunt Sally took one look
at the first one, and cried, “Good heavens, girl, you can’t show that to Cecelia!” I guess Aunt Sally thought it was a little too much like her—it
did
capture her nasty little sidelong smile. My second attempt devotes a great deal of detail to the lace on her collar and the way her hair is done (thicker and browner than it is in real life). I’m actually glad I had to re-do it, because the second portrait gave me better practice in lighting and composition. I suppose court painters in Europe have to do this kind of thing all the time. Do you think making Life prettier than it is is a painter’s vocation? We are going there to dinner this afternoon, to ceremonially present it, and I
know
Aunt Sally will make me sit next to the obnoxious F.

Captain F formally requested permission of Aunt Sally to “pay his addresses” to me. Julia is beside herself with delight. I try to regard all of this in a comical light (and have so far steadfastly refused the proffered copy of
A Tale of Two Cities
!). In fact, Captain F—like Captain McC and even his poisonous “boys” back in Greene County—aren’t the real villains of the story, any more than Mr. Tulkinghorn or Mr. Smallweed are the real villains of
Bleak House
. They are minions of an evil that has no shape, and is everywhere, devouring lives and turning friends Pa used to argue politics with into men who’d think nothing of lying in wait in the woods to shoot him dead—or girls you grew up with, into women who don’t understand why you haven’t stopped loving a man of whose politics they disapprove.

Curses! Aunt Sally did indeed secure invitations to that wretched reception! She has informed Julia and myself that we are also expected
to attend—in new dresses for which she has obtained the silk through Heaven only knows what channels! Three weeks of sewing and fittings! And, worse, three weeks of listening to Julia
talk
about sewing and fittings and how to fix my hair! Death, where is thy sting?

P.S. That’s F in the margin, eating cream cake at tea at Mrs. Bell’s. The other drawing is Mrs. Bell’s house with the hole shot through it.

[not sent]

Dearest,

Monday is Will Kydd’s day to get mail from the mainland. Even knowing there will be nothing from you, still I cannot suppress that little spurt of anticipation in my heart. An additional cause for gratitude on waking this morning: the blizzard that blew in Sunday has finally blown itself out, and when I crossed to do the milking about an hour before daylight, I could feel that the day would be warm—warm for December in Maine, in any case. Saturday night we had rain rather than snow. By noon the world will be awash in slush, it means we can get laundry done.

There! An afternoon of lugging in wood to the kitchen fire to heat the soak-water, of filling tubs with garments—incredible numbers of rinsed and rough-dried diapers—to soak overnight. The whole kitchen is a fog of baby-smelling steam! Mother, Peggie, and I laughed and sang sea-chanties. Then a sadness: just as dusk was falling, Will knocked on the door, with a letter from Brock, in Louisiana, telling Mother that our cousin, Farnum Haskell, has died of fever in New Orleans. Cousin Farnum had joined the Thirteenth Maine just before I came home, so the last I saw him was at my wedding, dancing with his tiny daughter Susan, who was standing on top of his boots. Only a few weeks ago, when we travelled to Northwest Harbor to church, I looked across the street to his sail-loft by the mill-dam, and wondered, When would Cousin Farnum be home? Now I know.

[not sent]

Dearest Cora,

Well, as you can see, the Awful Mrs. R came through and I now have actual writing-paper again, and real ink, and nibs. That drawing
at the top of the page is how she actually looks: rather like Lady Southdown in
Vanity Fair
, don’t you think? Julia and I have been cutting and sewing and fitting and sticking pins in our fingers for weeks, since we will need not only one new dress apiece, but
two
. Tho’ the Awful Mrs. R is having a reception for President Davis, Aunt Sally has scored over her because
we
are having His Excellency (or whatever the proper term is—His Confederacy????) for dinner (as a guest, that is—judging by his pictures he would make a rather scraggy entrée).

Between making two dresses, and turning out the
best
good china that Husband #2 brought from France, and Nellie still being very weak (tho’ Julia says, like Pa, that she’s just lazy), I have little time to either draw or read. At night I’ve been reading my way through
Waverley
and all its sequels, like a rat going through cheese.

You spoke of carrying Baby Mercy back and forth to Isle au Haut on Mr. Kydd’s boat; how did that answer? Does she like the sea? What does she look like now? Is her hair golden like Emory’s, or that lovely flax-straw color like yours? Are her eyes as beautiful as yours? Is she big or little for her age? I wish,
wish
, you could tell me what Isle au Haut is like, for I need to picture you there!

Here I conjure your reply:

My dearest Susie—The inhabitants of Isle au Haut dwell in caves, dress in skins (tho’ quite warmly and decently), and live chiefly upon raw sea-gull. I have introduced them to the works of Miss Austen, having first taught them the alphabet for that purpose. Your affectionate, Cora.

News of the battle in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Even first reports sound hideous, and I pray, pray, that your brother isn’t there, Cora. Curse this distance between us! Curse that I can’t fly there to be with you and little Mercy until it’s done and you know he is safe. I pretend you’ll get this and I pretend I’ll get one from you but sometimes it comes back to me that I won’t know, I won’t be able to give you any comfort—and I don’t know, if he’s killed, if you’ll come to hate me.

As we were coming out of headquarters today, I heard my name called and turned around and
saw—Emory
! I stood quite foolishly open-mouthed, and then in spite of all Aunt Sally’s instruction about good manners, flung myself into his arms. He looks well, Cora, and extremely handsome in his uniform (even if it is the wrong color). He embraced me so that he almost swept me from my feet, to hear that he has a daughter, that I had heard from you as late as October, that you still loved him and were true to him, despite the disapprobation of your friends. I told him what you had said, to the Daughters of the Union: That your loyalty to the Union, and your love for him, are alike unaltered, and he laughed and kissed me and pulled my hair the way Payne used to. He is an aide to General Pemberton, and on the train home I wrought upon Aunt Sally, to invite him, and Tom (who is in the same regiment), for Christmas, if they can get furlough from their duties.

How
I wish this was a real letter, so that I could really tell you that he is well!

P.S. Here’s a sketch of Emory, kneeling in the street to kiss Aunt Sally’s hand.

[not sent]
°

Dearest Susanna,

So much for the week’s warm weather! Wild wind bringing down snow; I hope the storm was bad enough in New Haven, to discourage Papa from setting forth, for there is little hope he will be able to cross the Reach tomorrow. But we are well for diapers, for many weeks to come. As I direct these letters to you, and drop them one by one into the “post-box”—an old candle-box tucked into a corner of Mr. Poole’s trunk—I imagine them flying straight to you, now freed of the tedious process of being carried across to Belfast, and delivered to some horny-handed bush-whacker in Kentucky, to be passed on to Eliza’s guerilla son and thence to Eliza …

And all, all to tell you, that we are well-stocked for diapers! I picture you reeling under the impact of this revelation. Yet could I get a note in your hand, recounting who said what at your Aunt Sally’s Sunday tea—or a scribble from Emory telling me how many thousands in Confederate money he has won on the cockroach races—I would rejoice in them. Perhaps, as Dora Copperfield says, it is better to be stupid than uncomfortable. Forgive your silly friend.

More steam, more fogs: baths in the kitchen, with the wind howling dimly on the other side of cushioning snow. I write this in bed, tucked to my chin in feather-ticks, Mercy curled sleeping at my side. It is the New England way, to bathe on Saturdays as if in expectation of being able to attend services, and to dress in our best on the Sabbath, and spend the day in quiet sitting and reading the Bible in the parlor, where a fire has been laid ready—the only day of the week, in winter, that it is so.

A family of mice has taken up residence in one of my dresser drawers. I have put out flour mixed with plaster, and a vessel of water, yet have found no corpses yet.

Newspapers at last! And, God bless Will Kydd, he has brought me the
New York World
, the
Chicago Tribune
, as well as the usual paper from Portland. The storm did not abate until yesterday, and like a cold shadow on the island, worse than any storm, came news of the bloodshed in Virginia. Only preliminary reports, but the Sixteenth was engaged. Peggie huddles weeping in a corner of the kitchen, “I know he’s dead! I know he’s dead!” and I struggle not to shout at her. Does she think Mother loves Ollie—her baby and her favorite—less than she? This evening, after supper, I read aloud the Psalms of hope, and the Acts of the Apostles—tales of faith and courage, whose end we know was good. But alone here in my room, with Nollie as well as Mercy at my side, I weep.

Why do I think it more likely that Ollie will be killed in battle, than that Brock will take sick with fever in Louisiana? Brock has written many times of the poisonous heat there, the deadly fevers that have felled one man in four in their camp, and have killed already seven of our island men in the Thirteenth. Little comfort to tell myself that tonight—Saturday—the battle is over and done, one way or the other, because I know Ollie may in fact be wounded unto death.

How does the imagination produce so many ways of tormenting oneself? God gave us the capacity to dream into the future, and the gift of faith, double-edged swords that can tear as well as mend. Yet these are the angel elements of our nature, for I feel certain that Mrs. Brown and her bovine sisters in the barn feel no anxiety about the quality of their fodder next Tuesday. Or perhaps they do—I can hear you saying, “How do
we
know?” How indeed, my dear friend?

You have passed before me along this road. I will take courage from your cheer.

P.S. One mouse dead at least—and a great deal of flour and plaster dust tracked about my room.

[not sent]

Susanna,

Though the moon is new and the clear night moonless, still Will Kydd snowshoed to our door, to give us Ollie’s letter. He is safe, Susie!

Papa arrived yesterday, and this morning the six of us traversed the marble-white world to Northwest Harbor to church in Uncle M’s sleigh. Only one brief service: there are chores to be done, wood to be cut and sawed, diapers
—how
many diapers!—to be rinsed and stacked in the corner of the summer kitchen, where they will freeze solid until next laundry-day. Still, for all the disapprobation of Pastor Wainwright and Uncle M and Mother, Christmas is
not
a day quite like other days. I can see it in Papa’s face as he plays with his grandchildren in the parlor. A rare fire has been kindled there, to the indignant horror of the spiders in the chimney.

Peggie declined my invitation, to read
A Christmas Carol
together as we did last year. So I have lain here, huddled under all my quilts, reading it to myself, sometimes aloud to my precious Mercy, who seems fascinated at my attempts to give different voices to Scrooge, and the Ghosts, and Mr. Cratchit, and Tiny Tim. At least she does
not yet say, “Oh, Mama, you’re doing it all wrong!” as I’m sure she one day will.

I hope your Christmas is as kindly, my friend. I hope your New Year will be as blessed.

[not sent]

Dear Cora,

With every good intention in the world, to write at least a line to you last night, I couldn’t do it. Here is an advantage to not being able to post these letters at all: I can pretend that as I write them, you will receive them the very next day, and know about Emory already, and the dinner for President Davis.